These Thumbnails For Fake Movie and Trailers on YouTube Are Hilarious

There is a whole cottage industry on YouTube dedicated to promoting movies that do not exist. Sometimes they’re for movies that are in development but haven’t been made yet. Most other times they’re for theoretical movies that could happen, or that fans want to happen. We’re talking sequels to beloved comic-book franchises that were never made. Or idealized versions of movies that couldn’t take place in our reality. Basically they’re fan-made trailers, edited from existing films. Sometimes they’re hilariously crude. Other times, they’re surprisingly slick.

The key to the whole thing is the thumbnail. Make an image that’s plausible enough when seen at very small size on a laptop (or, even better, even smaller on a phone) to convince someone casually browsing that they are making a movie about, say, the Spider-Man villain Carnage, and there does in fact exist a trailer for this film that you didn’t even know they were making. Again, some of these images are impressively Photoshopped and others are laughably terrible. But they often work, drawing millions upon millions of clicks. It’s an entire digital world dedicated to an alternate reality where Zack Snyder made a second Justice League movie. It’s quite a place to visit.

The staff of ScreenCrush has become mildly obsessed with these videos, and particularly in their wacky thumbnails. Here are ten of our favorites, along with links to the videos if you should decide you want to watch them yourself. But either way, don’t hold your breath for this Idris Elba Green Lantern movie. I don’t think it’s happening.